[C.] Who Were the Alleghans?
This is an inquiry in our aboriginal archæology, which assumes a deeper interest, the more it is discussed. All the republic is concerned in the antiquarian knowledge and true etymology and history of an ancient race, to whom tradition attaches valor and power, and who have consecrated their name in American geography upon the most important range of mountains between the valley of the Mississippi, and the Atlantic. But the inquiry comes home to us with a local and redoubled interest, from the fact, that they occupied a large portion of the western area of the State, comprising the valley of the Alleghany river to its utmost source, and extending eastwardly an undefined distance. Even so late as 1727, Colden, in his history of the Five Nations, places them under the name of “Alleghens,” on his map of this river. It is not certain that they did not anciently, occupy the country as far east and south as the junction of Allen’s creek, with the Genesee. A series of old forts, anterior in age to the Iroquois power, extends along the shores of lake Erie, up to the system of water communication which has its outlet into the Alleghany through the Conewongo. There are some striking points of identity between the character of these antique military works, and those of the Ohio valley, and this coincidence is still more complete in the remains of ancient art found in the old Indian cemeteries, barrows and small mounds of western New-York, extending even as far east as the ancient Osco, now Auburn.
The subject is one worthy of full examination, who this ancient race were? whence they came? and whither they went? are inquiries fraught with interest. We should not be led astray, or thrown off the track of investigation by the name. All the tribes, ancient and modern, have multiform names. This one of the Alleghans, probably fell upon the ears of the first settlers, but it is far from certain that it was their own term, while it is quite certain that it was not of the vocabulary of the bold northern race, the Iroquois, who impinged upon them. It has the character of an Algonquin word. Their descendants, whoever their ancestors were, may yet exist, under their own proper name, in the far west. The Iroquois, who pushed their conquests down the Alleghany and Ohio rivers after them, did not found a claim to territory further south on the Ohio river, than the mouth of the Kentucky. They pushed their war parties to the Catawba and Cherokee territories across the Alleghanies, and as far west as the Illinois. They swept over the whole region included between lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron, north. In the latter case we know it was a war against the tribes of the Algonquin stock, including one branch of another, and that their own generic stock, namely, the Quatoghies or Hurons.
The following communication on this subject, addressed to the Secretary of the Maryland Historical Society, is added in this connection. Although written to vindicate a question of antiquarian research, in a sister society, and partaking perhaps a little of a polemic cast, the facts are of permanent interest, and are thrown together in a brief and concentrated form.
New-York, May 28th, 1845.
Gentlemen:91
My attention has been called by a literary friend, to your notice of Mr. Brantz Mayer’s report on the subject of a national name, or distinctive synonyme for our country. Mr. Mayer having chosen to reflect upon the antiquarian value of the historical research involved in the inquiry, I feel called upon, as a member of the committee of the New-York Historical Society, before whom this question was discussed, to say a few words in reply.
“The following quotation from my ‘Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words,’ will best set forth my personal connection with the subject as a member of the society, and a humble laborer in the field of aboriginal antiquities, who is ready at all suitable times, to give authority for the use of whatever Indian terms he may employ.
”Alleghan, an obsolete aboriginal noun proper, applied adjectively both in French and English, to an ancient and long extinct people in North America, and likewise to the most prominent chain of mountains within the regions over which they are supposed to have borne sway.”
Our authorities respecting the ancient Alleghans, are not confined to the very late period, i. e. 1819,92 which is alone quoted, and exclusively relied on by the learned secretary of the Maryland Historical Society. Nor do they leave us in doubt, that this ancient people, who occupy the foreground of our remote aboriginal history, were a valiant, noble and populous race, who were advanced in arts and the policy of government, and raised fortifications for their defence. (N. Y. Hist. Col. vol. 2, p. 89, 91.) While they held a high reputation as hunters, they cultivated maize extensively, which enabled them to live in large towns; (Davies’ Hist. Car. Isds.) and erected those antique fortifications which are extended over the entire Mississippi valley, as high as latitude 43°, and the lake country, reaching from Lake St. Clair (Am. Phil. Trans.) to the south side of the Niagara ridge (the old shore of Lake Ontario) and the country of the Onondagas and Oneidas (Clinton’s Dis. N. Y. Hist. Soc. vol. 2.) Towards the south, they extended as far as the borders of the Cherokees and Muscogees.93 From the traditions of Father Raymond, they were worshippers of the sun, had an order of priesthood, and exercised a sovereignty over a very wide area of country. (His. Carib. Isds. Paris, 1658. London ed. of 1666, p. 204, et seq.)
At what era the Alleghan confederacy, thus shadowed forth, existed and fell in North America, we do not know. Our Indian nations have no certain chronology, and we must establish data by contemporaneous tradition of the Mexican nations, or by internal antiquarian evidence.
The “Old Fort” discovered by Dr. Locke in Highland Co. Ohio in 1838, denoted a period of 600 years from its abandonment,94 that is, 284 years before Christopher Columbus first sailed boldly into the Western ocean. The trees on Grave Creek mound denote the abandonment of the trenches and stone look-outs in that vicinity to have been in 1338. (Trans. Am. Ethnological Society, vol. 1, N. Y. 1845.) The ramparts at Marietta had a tree decayed in the heart, but the concentric outer circles, which could be counted, were 463. (Clinton’s Dis.) The live oaks on the low mounds of Florida, where one of the Algonquin tribes, namely, the Shawnees, aver that they once lived and had been preceded by a people more advanced in arts (Vide Arch. Am. vol. 1.) denote their abandonment about 1145. But even these data do not, probably reach back sufficiently far, to denote the true period.
If we fix upon the twelfth century as the era of the fall of the Alleghan race, we shall not probably over estimate the event. They had probably reached the Mississippi valley, a century or two before, having felt, in their original position, west and south of that stream, the great revolutionary movements which preceded the overthrow of the Toltec and the establishment of the Aztec empire in Mexican America.
There are but two words left in our geography, supposed to be of the ancient Alleghan language. These are Alleghany, and Yioghiogany, the latter, being the name of a stream which falls into the Monongahela, on its right bank, about twenty miles above Pittsburgh.
Tradition, not of the highest character, gives us the words Talligeu, or Talligwee, as the name of this ancient nation, although it is nearly identical in sounds with the existing and true name of the Cherokees, which, according to the late Elias Boudinot, (a Cherokee,) is Tsallakee. Col. Gibson, a plain man, an Indian trader and no philologist, who furnished Mr. Jefferson with Indian vocabularies of the dialects of his day, to be used in answer to the inquiries of Catherine the Great, (vide Trans. Royal Academy, Petersburgh,) expressed an opinion that this ancient people did not use a T before the epithet, but were called Allegewee. Tradition has, however, strictly speaking, preserved neither of these terms, although both appear to have strong affinities with them. The word Alleghany has come down to us, from the earliest times, as the name of the great right-hand fork of the Ohio, and also as the name, from the same remote period of antiquity, of the chain of mountains of which the stream itself may be said to be the most remote northeasterly tributary. In this form it is evidently a local term, applied geographically, according to the general principles of the Indian languages, like hanna in the Susquehanna, and hannock in the Rappahannock, which appear to denote, in each case, a river, or torrent of water. By removing this local inflection, we have Alleghan as the proper term for the people, and I have felt sustained, by this inductive process, in regarding Alleghan as the original cognomen of the “mound builders” of North America.
Having thus given my views with respect to the particular word which awakened this discussion, permit me now to turn to the other matters, so confidently brought forward by the secretary of the Maryland Historical Society.
The Iroquois affirm that they formerly lived in the area of the Cherokee country. (Clin. Dis. N. Y. H. Soc., vol.) Captain Smith met a war party of this nation, in exploring one of the rivers of Virginia in 1608. So late as the era of the settlement of North Carolina, they brought off to the north the last of their cantons, in the tribe of the Tuscaroras. They sold the lands as far south as Kentucky river. (Imlay’s Hist. Kent.) They quitclaimed the soil in northern Virginia and Maryland, and they quite forbid all sales of land by the Delawares. All authorities, indeed, concur in showing the track of their migration, prior to 1600, to have been from the south to the north and northeast. Affiliation of language is also thought to denote their origin in the south. (Vide Gallatin, 2 vol. Archa. Amer.) The Hurons, who are of the same stock, affirm that they were originally the first of all the nations, and call the Lenapees, who have assumed the same distinction, nephews, denoting inferiority in the chronological and ethnological chain. In this term of nephews, so applied to the Delawares, all the Iroquois tribes concur. (Vide Oneota.)
Algonquin tradition, recorded by Mr. Heckewelder in the Am. Phi. Trans. in 1819, on the part of the Lenapees, denotes that a confederation of these two stocks, namely, the political uncles and nephews, defeated the Alleghans, and drove them from the country. This tradition is referred to a time when the Delawares or Lenapees, were shorn of all power and consequence, “having been degraded,” according to their phrase, to assume the petticoat, and found a refuge in a new country, to them, on the Muskingum, where they were taken under the care, as they had previously been east of the mountains, of the Moravian brethren. In their reminiscences they would consequently be prone to give prominence to such events as would reflect the most favorable lights on their history. They are speaking of events which we see by the preceding references, must have transpired 500 or 600 years before, and in a very distant quarter of the Union. Yet they add some particulars which written history alone could preserve; and they ascribe to themselves such a degree of foresight, prudence, wisdom, valor and sense of Christian justice, as no Indian tribe in America ever evinced. These traditions are recorded by Mr. Heckewelder in a spirit of Christian kindness on his part, but he does not vouch for them; they are to be judged, like other traditions, by their probabilities and their conformity to other and known traditions. It is on this account that I have adduced the preceding data. Every Indian nation is prone to exalt itself, and if we would admit fully the claims of each, the rest would be sorry persons indeed.
The first thing to be borne in mind is, that the tradition is a very ancient one, and must have come down shorn of many particulars, which there appears to have been great carefulness to re-state. The scene also is remote from the place of narration. No such fact as the principal one of the crossing, on which great stress is laid by Mr. Mayer, on the part of the Maryland Historical Society, could have taken place in the Ohio valley, or within one thousand miles of Pittsburgh, where alone, it must be remembered, we have any evidence in the existing names of the country of the residence of the Alleghans.
The Algonquins, (we include the Lenapees in their proper groupe,) attempting to cross the Mississippi, into the territories of a foreign nation, with a large body of men, are defeated and driven back. They show themselves pacifically, in a moderate number, and the foreigners say, come! but turning out a multitude, are assailed. Whether this was an original stratagem, or an after thought, we are left to infer, but in either case, it would be quite conformable to Indian policy. For the sake of clearness, we will locate this event in the section of this great river, between the Chickasaw bluffs and Natchez, its probable site. On this defeat they form an alliance with their uncles, the Iroquois, who were already east of the Mississippi, and were located north of the Alleghans. A long war begins, in the course of which the latter erect the fortifications which have excited so much curiosity in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, and after proving themselves valiant men, are finally overpowered and driven off. The Lenapees are in 1819 the historians of their enemies, and berate them as faithless. The Maryland Historical Society, twenty-six years later, endorse the whole story, and pronounce the Alleghans pusillanimous, not so much it would seem for their heroic struggle and defence, as for the cause of it, namely, not letting the Algonquin hordes march into or through their country, as the superior forecast and judgment of the latter might, on further progress, dictate.
Does any sound historian? does any one acquainted with Indian life, character or history, as it exists, and has always existed in North America, believe that the pacific and Christian request, put forth by Mr. Heckewelder, as the chronicler of his Delaware converts at Gnadenhutton, namely, that they might be allowed to explore a country east of them, to select it out and dwell therein, or that they had previously had the prudence, energy and forecast to send spies, like Moses, to spy it out—as if they were seeking a country for an agricultural settlement, with flocks and implements of husbandry—I repeat it, does any one, who reads this detailed part of the tradition as told to and believed by the good old missionary, credit a syllable of it? If he does, his good-natured credulity must be greater than that of the committee of the New-York Historical Society, whose suggestive report on the discussion of a distinctive national name has been the theme of so much misconception—may I not add, of so truly Pickwickian a degree of patriotism.
The truth is, this suggestion of a peaceful passage for the great Algonquin army, is to be found originally in the 20th chapter of Numbers, in the demand made, by divine direction, by the Jewish leader for a safe passport through the land of Edom, for the faithful performance of which there was a divine guaranty. And when the kind father had taught this historical lesson to his peaceable disciples on the banks of the Muskingum, he did not perceive, in afterwards putting down the traditions of his favorite Delawares, how completely they had adapted a sacred event to the exigencies of savage life, in a host of lawless invaders in the American wilderness, in the 12th century.
But we are not only to take this entire tradition of 1819, of an event happening 600 years before, in extenso, with all its moral exactness of motive, in the original actors, without any abatements or corrections required by other traditions or history, but the good father, whose moral excellence is pure and unimpeachable, but who was no philologist, aims to make the existing lexicography of the Delaware prove the tradition; and we have, in a footnote, a forced etymology of the name of the river Mississippi, to demonstrate that this is a Delaware name. Now, the name of this river is not “Namaesa Sipu,” that is, sturgeon, trout, or as he gives it, “fish river,” but Missi-sippi—a derivative from the adjective great, in an aboriginal sense, and sippi, a river. Mr. Gallatin (Archa. Am. vol. 2) is inclined to believe that it should be translated “the whole river,” or a unity of waters, but neither he nor any other commentator, has been able to make “fish” out of “missi.” The merest tyro in the Indian languages, must perceive that the etymology does not bear the meaning of Fish river, and if it did, it would prove, contrary to their reputation, that the Indians give the most inappropriate geographical names, of all men in existence. Fish river would be the most malappropriate name for the Mississippi. Its turbid waters and rushing channel, surcharged with floating trees, and subject to a thousand physical mutations every season, is absolutely forbidding to the larger number of species, and favorable only to the coarser kinds which are rejected from the table of the epicure.
A single remark more. The Delawares have never lived, or held an acre of land on the Mississippi, in its whole course between Itasca lake and the Balize. When Penn came to America, they lived on the Delaware, in central Pennsylvania. They were ordered to quit the sources of the Delaware river by the Iroquois in 1742, and go to Wyoming or Shamoken.95 They found their way across the Alleghanies, in time to burn Col. Crawford at the stake,96 and oppose the settlement of the Ohio valley, prior to the revolution; they settled on the Muskingum, and after some afflictions and mutations, chiefly brought upon themselves, they accepted lands, and began to recross the Mississippi in 181897. They are now located on the west banks of the Missouri, on the Konza. Yet the etymology adverted to attributes to this tribe, not only the naming of the river upon which they never lived, and never held any lands, but presupposes, that the Illinois and other Algonquin nations living on its banks, above the influx of the Ohio and the Missouri, to whom, with the influence of the French, the actual name is due, preserved the Delaware term “Namæsa Sepu,” although it is neither used by their descendants nor by Europeans.
Notes
91 Addressed to the Editors of the New-York Evening Post and National Intelligencer.
92 Trans. Hist. and Lit. Com. Am. Phil. Soc. Vol. 1, Philadelphia, 1819.
93 Seneca tradition, N. Y. Hist. Col. vol. 2.
94 Cincinnati Gazette.
95 Colden’s Hist. Five Nations, vol. 1. p. 31.
96 Metcalf’s Indian Wars in the West.
97 This is the first time that this tribe ever by history, or tradition, other than their own, saw this river.